God Loves Your Body. Do You?

A freedom cry for the body weary.

Is it just me? Or are people drowning in body shame right now? Some are quietly going under, slinking off into a dark corner of their heart, while others are unwilling to go quietly as they post and shout.

Recently, I polled my Instagram audience, asking them if they believed God thinks their body is good. More than half (300 people who responded to the poll) said yes. When I then asked if they saw their body as good, an abysmal more than half said no.

"How can this be?" my shoulders slumped, feeling like the wind got punched out of me.

I know how this can be. It's because we've been handed cruddy frameworks for how to think about our bodies.

C.S. Lewis wrote in his book The Four Loves "Man has held three views of his body…First there is that of those ascetic Pagans who called it the prison or the "tomb" of the soul, and [others] to whom it was a "sack of dung," food for worms, filthy, shameful, a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones. Then there are the Neo-Pagans, the nudists and the sufferers from Dark Gods, to whom the body is glorious. But thirdly we have the view which St. Francis expressed by calling his body "Brother Ass."… Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now a stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body."

The body is bad.

The body is my god.

The body is an unruly beast.

Pick your poison.

Keep in mind our Biblical baseline whenever I talk body: our body (biblical Greek word soma) is good, it’s our flesh (biblical Greek word sarx) that is not good. The flesh is to view our body as a meat suit, something we get to do what we want with when we feel an urge, and that is bad. The Bible uses both words interchangeably depending on the context of the verse.

Or do you not know that your body (soma - the living body of men, as made by God and saw good) is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? 1 Corinthians 6:19

Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh( sarx - the flesh that covers your bones, i.e. your meat suit desires and ability:)? Galatians 3:3

If believers and biblical teaching keep looking at our soma as sarx, we won’t get out of this body shame mess. Since God’s people have personal access to God, who made our bodies and saw them as good, the Church should be leading the way out. But instead, there’s much confusion.

As much as I honor and respect the saints before us, St. Francis planted a seed in the church and that grew gnarly roots, leaving us even more distant from our bodies, treating them as menacing problems to be solved. I humbly submit to you that St. Francis's view of our bodies being Brother Ass, falls way short of the glory of God revealed through human bodies. His interpretation of viewing our body as a formidable yet trainable animal perpetuates the problem of seeing our body as something we have, like a house or a car, not who we are.

Being made in God's image doesn't mean we have a body,it means we are a body.

Jesus took on human form to show us what was meant to be for human beings with physical form who were created to love God.

Let me explain. God is Spirit. God is Love. His Spirit IS love. In the beginning, God wanted His love to go beyond the spirit realm. God wanted flesh and blood children, a family of his own. He made sons and daughters in His image. His extravagant love took on flesh and blood while purposefully weaving into our being the right to choose, also known as free will. God gives free will to his image-bearing embodied children because real love requires choice. Any love without choice is oppressive and tyrannical. With our embodied free will, we were enticed by another spiritual entity that opposes God's love with something that looked good and God said was not ours to have. Our heart wanted what it wanted. We listened to the lies of the opposer of God's love and chose wrongly. We sinned. But here's the good news: God knew before we sinned that He would provide a way for his flesh and blood children to be redeemed. Jesus came in flesh and blood to live the life in body, as a body, that we couldn't live.

Jesus didn't come to earth and rent a body, like swinging by the rental car department at the airport so He could complete His work trip. Jesus took on flesh as an act of total redemption for all fallen things. The redemption of all created things includes our bodies because God loves bodies.

If we love something, we don't treat it like an animal, something we subdue or have dominion over. Our bodies are not our "Brother Ass", a wild animal that needs taming. They are WHO we are. If our bodies were animals, something other than us, then Jesus would not have put one on because a body would then be something lesser than who He is.

Jesus is God.

Jesus is one WITH God.

He was fully human and wholly holy, as a body, not just in a body.

Jesus didn't discard His body after giving it over for the sins of the word on the cross. Jesus died, resurrected, and ascended to heaven as a body. And get this: Scripture tells us that Jesus is now in heaven as a body! As far as we know, He's the ONLY one in heaven with a body. He's not riding his body around in heaven, parading an obedient donkey. He is His body! He is His because His body is all inclusively part of who He is and what He gave to us for the payment of our sins. And one day, He is returning, not as a spirit to duke it out with all the other evil spirits on the earth who have given us hell, but as a body to conquer and redeem the split of heaven and earth.

We don't have a body, but we are our bodies, and God so dearly loves them because they are who we are.

We are not our flesh.

We are our bodies.

If no one has told you this lately, listen good. God loves you. God LOVES your body. Do you love your body? If not, He's waiting for you to come to Him to hear even more good news about who you are as a body, with less focus on what you have or don't have. He wants to move His love for your body into your body so you can love your body the same as He. It’s 100% possible to love your body like He loves your body because it’s part of His unbent command to Love Him, ourselves and others.

Mark 12:28-31

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

²⁹ “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ³⁰ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.³¹ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Loving yourself INCLUDES loving your body. Your body is how God’s love gets seen. The word love that is used in the above passage is the Greek word agapo. It means “to love dearly”. Jesus uses the same word, agapao, each time it appears in this passage.He doesn’t change the word to a different word for love. Takeaway: The way we love God is how we are to love ourselves and others. Loving ourselves includes loving our bodies and other bodies.

I know some of you thinking right now: Alisa, loving my body feels icky. Like idolatry. This is due to those gnarly theological roots of the three poor choices handed down through generations: My body is bad. My body is God. My body is an unruly beast.

Here’s what I can promise you: If you love God dearly, you won’t need to worry about loving your body idolatrously. The Holy Spirit will warn you and keep you from falling into a fleshly pit.

If you don’t love your body and feel like you are living in a world where your body doesn't "fit," then I hope you will join me this Thursday, January 16th, at 1pm EST, in my LIVE webinar over at Revelation Wellness titled "Why Do I Hate My Body and What Can I Do About it? If you can't make it LIVE, you will miss out on some live fun, but you can still get the replay. Be sure to register.

If you come, I will be spitting fire...so....be ready. :)

I hope this message finds you free or sets you free.

Comment below to let me know if there's something more you want me to expand upon in my above freedom cry that strikes the face of our shared enemy.

See you Thursday!

Peace,

Alisa